The Green Hack SRD

The Green Hack (TGH) is a traditional tabletop roleplaying game, played with paper, pencils and dice. The game's design goal is to be broadly compatible with TSR-editions of the Original Fantasy Roleplaying Game while being as compact, easy to learn, easy to teach, and smooth to play as possible.

This is the Systems Reference Document for The Green Hack system, made available under the Open Game License so that you can use it to make your own games or content. The file is plaintext with Markdown formatting. You can also read it and make your own copy on Google Docs or read it or fork it on GitHub. You can export many different formats from Google Docs.

How is this different from The Black Hack?

I love The Black Hack but have found characters to be generally a bit overpowered compared to the level recommendations found in published adventures.  This was in part because I often found myself forgetting to apply things like the Powerful Opponents rule, which I found cumbersome.

The Green Hack replaces the combat system from The Black Hack with one inspired by The White Hack. It's designed for fast and smooth combat while maintaining rough compatibility with old school versions of the original game. IMHO it plays better smoother than The Black Hack with even less need to convert anything from published modules. Meanwhile, combat plays faster than in B/X or other old editions of the Orginal Game. Both PCs and opponents are more likely to hit during combat in The Green Hack, reducing the amount of whiffing but keeping the challenge level consistent with old editions.

What about Macchiato Monsters?

Macchiato Monsters also combines elements of The Black Hack and Whitehack. But Macchiato Monsters mostly leaves The Black Hack combat system intact while importing the magic system from Whitehack. The Green Hack is sort of the opposite: it leaves The Black Hack magic system intact while bringing in a combat system similar to that of Whitehack.

How else does it differ from The Black Hack ver 1?

- Warrior class is pretty different.

- All classes have a few extra features, particularly as they advance.

- Players don't roll to increase stats as they level up.

- Rules for Opposed Rolls, when player characters are in conflict with each other or with noteworthy non-player characters.

- Rules for fighting swarms of opponents.

- Rules for Backgrounds are "Backported" from _The Black Hack_ version 2.

- "Cure Light Wounds" explicitly heals paralysis.

- Probably other stuff I've forgotten about.